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About The frontier. (O'Neill City, Holt County, Neb.) 1880-1965 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 1903)
[AMERICAN SHIPOV RNEirBACIC Steamer, Caracas Not Allowed to Land Its Cargo at the Port of La Guayra—Venezuelan Shipping Captured by the Allies—Correspondent Tells of Conditions of Life in the South American FLepublic—People of San Juan, Porto RJco, Welcome Admiral Dewey. I A merchant ship owned by cltlzen3 t of (he United States was sent away •from the port of J,a Guayra. Venezue la, and with half its cargo still aboard had to go to Willemstad, Curacoa, to land the goods. The vessel, the Caracas of the Red “D" line, first was given permission to enter and discharge its cargo, hut later was ordered out to sea for the night, and then was notified that it would not he allowed to re-enter to j complete the landing of cargo. Apparently there are serious differ ences of opinion among the allies, as (he driving away of the United Slates vpssel after once being admitted was the result of conflicting orders. First the Drltish commander agreed to the entry of the Caracas and then the Italian commander forbade it admis sion. Later the captain was notified lie would he allowed to disembark his cargo on condition that he would leave before nightfall, returning under the same terms the next day. These conditions were accepted, and with one-third of its cargo still aboard (lie Caracas pul out. Then came the notice that the vessel must not re turn. Lieut. Commander Diehl at four | o’clock in the afternoon endeavored to then set them free. The Venezuelan l insurgents are increasing in numbers ami the revolt against Castro is gain icg strength. WILL APPOINT A BOARD. Plan of President Roosevelt to Settle the Dispute. It Is understood that the President’s plan as arbitrator in the Venezuelan dispute is to appoint a board of arbi trators. He would not confine this important undertaking to any one man, nor does he feel able himself to spare the vast amount of time neces sary for an examination In detail of each of the many claims that would be presented against Venezuela. Necessarily the President's own board would include some members of a high order of legal talent, as well as others thoroughly versed In the prac tice of International law. It is said that the crucial point to go before the arbitration hoard is the famous "Calvo doctrine." This doctrine, which was laid down by the greatest of Latin American international lawyers, and for many years has been regarded as beyond question by all the Latin-Amer Ican republics, denies the right of any nation to intervene diplomatically in zuelan houses is alike. The front door opens into an outer vestibule, its length being the width of the front door, or rooms. At its end a second door opens into the patio. Ev erything goes in and out this door callers, grocers, servants and often even the burros. Some of the finest have back gates and doors, but the ordinary house has no alleyways. An American cannot but be astonished, as she sits in the drawing room visit ing, to hear the l'eet of a burro clatter along the patio, down the few steps, posibly through the kitchen, into the back patio or into the corral, lt3 quar ters. She does not object though, for next to the sweet-tempered chil dren and pretty women, she likes the burro best, of anything in Venezuela. He is so grave, so graceful, so indus trious and so self-respecting. The patio is usually oblong or square. Ttie centre may be a real garden, with shrubs, trees, vines and flowers, or it may be cemented or tiled, having its plants in pots. In either of these eases there are usually fountains, gold fish, orchids, birds and sometimes monkeys. The roof projects over part of the patio, mak ing a porch and here the family really lives. »• eighteen inches apart, the space be tween being filled with stones or ciay. Outside the poles, wet natural clay is plastered on and smoothed | with a board. The sun dries this to hardness, but in wet weather it often becomes spongy. The houses of the poor and many fences are made of large brick3 of wet ciay, dried in the sun, but not burned. Small cabins in the country are built by sticking poles into the ground and nailing to these clapboards roughly made from the outer wood of the royal palm tree. This class of houses is too cheap and p^ir to warrant an expensive roof, an^fthey are generally thatched. In the wooded part of the country the lcave^ of the palm are tied in bunches and hound on the roof frame in layer A* These bunches are about two feet thick and lap each other just as our shingles do. Where wood is not plentiful and palms are not to be had the roof is thatched with bunches of young wild cane. The palms and cane are tied on to the pole rafters by means of a long vine of the nature of our grape stems, called ba.jucca. This grows j from fifty to one hundred feet in ; length, varying in thickness from j rope to twine. It is so strong that j I AHWRAl /? n '//> 4. £Jgr TYPE OF VENEZUELAN TROOPS AND TWO NOTED AMERICANS WHO HAVE FIQURED IN THE WAR NEWS. obtain from the commanders of the foreign warships an extension of a few hours in the time given the Caracas to remain at. its dock in order that it might llnish unloading. Ills request to this end was refused and he did not insist. The commanders of the blockading (warships explained that they were act ing on the ordehi of the British ad junlral and that the orders given to per mit the Caracas to discharge more than the mall had neon given to sat isfy Commander Diehl. The Caracas I consequently left its berth at l.a ’(.uayra at li o'clock when it. iiad land Jed not nmro than t\ro-thirds of its cargo. The rule maije.. by. the allies that 'steamers reaching l.a Guayra before Dec. 30 were to be allowed to enter IKjrt and discharge theIr”cargoes dur ing the day. but wen? not to be al lowed to take cargo on beard, created general dissatisfaction at that port. As there is no export duty on goods shipped from Venezuela, the ruling does not anfect the government. Only the ship workers are affected. The German warship which passed l.a Guayra towing two large schooners was the Panther, it captured the ves sels near Maracaibo. The Bausan ami the Tribune cap tured the following prizes: The schooner Castor, loaded with salt, from Araya. The schooner Maria Luisa, with car go of cocoa, from Cavonero. The sloop Josefita Carmin de Vega, loaded with a general cargo, from Car onero. A blockade of the Venezuelan ports of Puerto Cabelio and Maracaibo lias been declared officially. The German admiral is at Willemstad, Curacao. The Germans continue to cut the mainmasts of Venezuelan vessels and oehalf of one of its subjects where the courts of the country are open to his application for justice. WELCOME TO ADMIRAL DEWEY. People of San Juan, Porto Rico, Cheer American Sailor. The reception to Admiral Dewey on his arrival at San Juan, Porto Rico, was a tremendous success. The parade which he led with the naval officers was an imposing spectacle. There was an immense crowd of spectators. Later there was an official reception at the palace. The admiral and Gov. Hunt received the various officials and citizens generally, who greeted them enthusiastically. The admiral ex pressed himself as highly pleased with his reception. The governor gave a ball in honor of the admiral. IN THE CITY OF CARACAS. | The Home Life and Surroundings of the Venezuelans. Tile exteriors of Venezuelan houses ■ are almost exactly alike, so much so that it is a wonder a man in his cups ever finds his home. Until you are inside the inner door you have no way of knowing whether you are to see splendor or squalor, whether there ,,s to be one little dirty patio, with slov enly women and numerous naked chil dren, or a beautiful, spacious potio, with gardens and trees beyond, with furniture from Europe and inmates beautiful in face, figure and attire ment. In Caracas there is no fash ionable quarter, the poor aud the rich dwell side by side; but since the house wall or the garden wall sepa rates the two, and since there are no front porches to sit upon, it matters little who your neighbors are. The general arrangement of Vene 4 [ The drawing room or parlor runs I the full length of the house, exclusive of the vestibule. The Windows have iron bars outside and wooden blinds inside. They need no glass windows and have none, except occasionally one of the panels*of the blinds may be glass. The bedrooms and dining room are on each side of the patio, the kitchen and servants’ quarters back. This arrangement is sometimes varied by having the dining room back and a second patio between that and the kitchen and servants’ quarters, j The floors are of cement, covered with hardwood, hut more oftener with rugs or matting or oilcloth. Few rooms are carpeted all over. Most of 'the larger houses of Venezuela have Water works and electric lights, tew have sewerage and plumbing. Cara cas has plumbing and sewers from the houses, but the creeks serve tor the general sewerage. Under ordinary circumstances this would not he well but the hills are at such angles that . ays and tho sewerage sudden showers send the mountainside, icks so that Caracas is one^of the most healthy cities in the world. Generally speaking, the houses in Venezuela have but one story and no cellars. The best houses are con structed with two brick walls, one foot and a half or a two-foot space filled with cement. Other houses have walls of cement or cement stone. These walls are made by filling wooden molds with cement until it sufficiently hardens to hold its weight. The molds are then removed and plac ed on top, refilled with cement, and so on to completion. Small houses, especially those in the country, are constructed by erect ing two rows of poles, some six to lumbermen use it to fasten their logs together in booms, boatmen to tie their boats and divers to tether their burros. It is very flexible and can be tied in any kind of knots. Many of the mannerisms ot Vene zuela women remind one of the south ern women, while in other ways they are like women in the most conserva tive parts of Europe. No woman ot respectability goes upon the streets alone in the evening in Caracas, and young unmarried women never go alone at any time and under any cir cumstances; further, they are seldom left in the houses alone. Married women can go about in the daytime with discretion, but they are very apt to go in pairs or groups. Young women never seo young men alone, and they usually do their visiting and love-making through the iron bars of the windows. American tin enters into the con struction of some small huts in Vene zuela. Few Americans realize how the peon prizes our tin can. He utilizes it for purposes we would never think he could. Cans, great and small, are flattened out and used lor siding and rootiiig, being held in place by cane or vii)|es. If there was money to paint ihis tin, it would last a long time; as it is'it soon rusts. The partition walls of the best houses are built like the outside ones. The roof has first round sticks of lignum vitae for rafters and the inter stices are filled in with cane held in place by wire. This is covered with cement and red tile, laid in cement, covers all. This tile roof is used on ail houses alike (except, of course, the little huts -eferred to) so that when one stands on Calvario in Ca racas or any hillside near any town, one sees masses of red tile, the only variance in color being due to age, the old ones being moss-grfiwn. i UVESIre LOST __ • FRIGHTFUL ACCIDENT ON GRAND TRUNK RAILROAD. TWO TRAINS CRASH TOCETHER Number of Deed Reaches More Than Thirty—Responsibility for Accident is Believed to Rest on Telegraph Operator. LONDON, Ont.—A train wreck bringing death to over two score of passengers and terrible pain and suf fering to about thirty-five, occurred at 10:10 o'clock Friday night at t\an stead, Canada, a station on the Sarnia branch of the Grand Trunk, forty miles from this city, when the Pacific express, flying westward at the rate of fifty miles an hour, and crowded to its capacity with passengers returning to their homes from holiday visits, crashed into an eastbound freight. The latest estimates of the fatalities is thirty killed and thirty-five or more injured. The darkness of the night and the raging of a blizzard added horrors to the wreck. Fire broke out in the wreckage of the day coach, but it was smothered with snow, which was thrown on it before it gained any headway. The Pacific express is a fast train. Last night it was delayed two hours by the heavy travel and at Wanstead it was speeding to make up time. The freight was working slowly east under orders to take the switch at Wanstead md allow the express to pass. In the blinding snow storm neither sngineer saw the other train approach ng, apparently, and the freight had iust commenced to pull in the siding when the passenger train came up. The shock was awful. In a second :he baggage and express cars of the oassenger train telescoped into the day :oach. This day coach was reduced :o splinters ana rragmems duck cj me ast three windows. As it was crowd 'd, the results were terrible. Fire that Broke out was quickly smothered, but the fire was scarcely more dangerous Jian the cold. For three hours or more injured passengers were pinned mderneath wreckage, crying piteously tor help, while they suffered from ex posure to the elements. Exposure probably hastened the leath of some of the Injured and ■aused the death of some of those who might have been saved if it had been anly a question of extricating them irom the wreckage. The Pullman cars stayed on the track and were comparatively umii* lured, although the passengers in them were severely shaken in the shock. Andrew Carson, the operator at Watford, the first station east, of the wreck, whose failure to deliver or ders to Conductor McAuliffe of the Pacific' express to pass the freight at Wanstead is said by the Grand Trunk officials to have caused the wreck, made to the Associated Press his first statement since the wreck. He says he received the order for No. 5, the express, to pass the freight at Wanstead at 9:48 o'clock, but de clares positively that a few minutes later Dispatcher J. G. Kerr at Don don called him and ordered him to “bust” or cancel the order. He said: About 9:54, after calling Wyoming and ascertaining that the freight was there, the dispatcher called me rapidly a half dozen times. When I answered on the wire he told me to 'bust' this order. I wrote ‘bust it’ across the order just as McAuliffe came in and asked me what the order board was out against hifn for. 1 told him we had had an order for him but the dis patclier Mad Dusted u. nc asaeu me to hurry and write him a clearance order, which 1 did. After the train had started and was out of my reach tlie dispatcher learned that the freight had left Wyoming. 1 told him I could not stop No. 5, as it had left. He immediately began calling Kings Court Junction, the station between Watford and Wanstead, on the rail road wire and i tried to raise them on the commercial wire. We both failed to do this, however, until after the express had passed the Junction.” Carson admitted that he knew that it was against the rules to cancel a train order without sending a substi tute for it, but said that the dispatch er was his superior officer and he dis liked to question his order or dispute liis authority to take this action. Dis patcher Kerr’s order book in the local Grand Trunk office does not show that the order was “busted” or >an celled as Carson claims. AccortPjig to the book it was still in force End should have been delivered to the conductor of the express. Kerr has not made any statement even to the railroad officials and will not until he takes the stand at the inquest. Division Superintendent George D. 'Tones of Toronto says that the rule against cancelling or “busting" train orders is the strictest in the company’s code. T (i0 not believe,” he said, "that it has been violated since the T~. effect.. Dispatcher Kerr Is one best and most efficient dispatch our service. He is the operatoi acqompauied the train bearin duke and duchess of York o: royal tour of Canada a year have every confidence in him." MOORS PUT TO ROUT. ( Two Thousand of Sultan’s Trolops Killed or Wounded. \ TANGIER, Morocco.—On December 22, 10.000 Shereeflan troops, command ed by a brother of the sultan’s minister of war, received orders to concentrate and take the offensive against the pre tender at Taza. Before the Shereefi ans moved upon him the pretender at tacked them with large bodies of cav alry. The imperial army was sur rounded, completely routed and fled in disorder toward Fez, abandoning all materials of war. The first fugitives arrived at Fez on the morning of De cember 24. The gates of Fez at present are shut. Shops there are closed and the popu lation is greatly excited, but there has been no disorder. The European colony of Fez, em bodying about 500 persons, is taking no - steps to leave the town and appears to be satisfied that it is in no imminent danger, although the situation is re garded as serious. It is said that the % pretender’s followers have received nu-' merous additions since his success and he is already negotiating with the tribes of Wedmaweb valley. The pop ulation of Fez is reported to be gen erally hostile to the sultan and ready to acclaim any pretender who will guarantee the town from pillage. No details of the Imperial losses have yet been received here, but it is rumored that 2,000 of the sultan's sol diers were killed or wounded. The authorities here are trying, to minimize the disaster. It is said that a section of the imperial troops sent as rein forcements deserted to the rebels and aided in driving the local troops back to Fez. ASKS FOR ASSISTANCE. ' Caleb Powers of Kentucky Says His ^ Means Are Exhausted. GEORGETOWN, Ky.—Ex-Secretary of State Caleb Powers, who has had two trials and now awaits in jail here his third trial for complicity in the ! murder of the late Governor William Goebel, issued the following appeal to the public: “I have had written a number of letters to different states asking for1 Jpj I financial aid in my coming trial for i alleged complicity in the Goebel murJ | der. A portion of the press has,1 I through a misunderstanding of rfS • -"i facts,'atterilpfSO tothwfrrt my plan for j raising the much-needed money with! which i.> defend msoSr l)v circulating’ ^B®g a report that these letters were not genuine because signed by different H persons for me. l| “It is true that many or the letters ™ were- signed by different persons, be- ' cause it was impossible for one person to send them out in the limited time I before my next trial, but all of these I letters are genuine. I “I have been continuously in the gi jails of this state for nearly three * years. My means are exhausted. The generosity of Kentucky has been taxed to the utmost in my former so-called trials. In a few weeks I am again to be tried for my life. Hence my appeal now to my friends outside of Ken tucky.” - 9 W. J. BRYAN IN MEXICO. Visit Varied by Sight-Seeing and Offi cial Calls. MEXICO CITY.—William J. Bryan’s visit has been varied by sightseeing J and official calls. He has been re- M reived in audience by President Diaz and Minister of Finance Limantour. Mrs. Bryan and the children visited j the shrine of the Virgin of Guada- jH I Last evening the Brya.t party took I a train for Cordova, whence they I will travel over the Vera Cruz & Pa- 'fl 1 rifle road to Alfred Bishop Mason’s I haccienda. The party will return here Tuesday morning. The government people have not sought Mr. Bryan for information on 3R silver as his views are well known here. Gobbled by the Trust. LOUISVILLE, Ky.—According to { ; the Courier-Journal, Harry Weissing- j or, president of the Weissinger Tobac- j|8HH ; co company of this city, has closed a 1 j deal which has been pending for sev-, j oral days for the sale of his plant to gj the Continental Tobacco company for $2. Ant I.tn Ml. The par.'1:, have been'^^H| j signed and Mr. Weissinger will leave 1 for New York to complete the details ] of tii*' transaction. Tie company is 1 one of the largest independent con j cerns of the kind in the country. Cervera is Honored. MADRID—The appointment of Vice jg Admiral Cervera. who surrendered to || the American fleet off Santiago do j Cuba, to the post of chief of staff of the navy has been published in the Olha ia! Gazot!. .